1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an image processing system including a photographing apparatus, such as a digital camera, and an image processing apparatus, such as a personal computer (PC), to which the photographing apparatus is connected, a method for formatting a recording medium and a program product. The photographing apparatus photoelectrically converts an optical image of a still object into image data, provides image processing if necessary, and record the image data in a recording medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
In general, image data photographed by a digital camera is taken into a computer by image take-in software (i.e., driver software), and then the image data is processed, printed, or recorded using an application software of the computer.
However, since the image data taken by the digital camera is taken in the computer first, and then the image data is processed using the application software of the computer in the conventional system, the operations of the digital camera and the computer are independent of each other with little cooperativity between the digital camera and the computer.
To overcome this problem, a digital camera which is capable of processing photographed image data by itself without relying on a computer has been proposed.
However, in this case, the digital camera needs a large capacity of memory in order to process the photographed image data. Consequently, the power consumption of the camera increases, and in addition, the size of the digital camera inevitably becomes large, which results in an increased manufacturing cost.
Meanwhile, recent improvement in the performances of computers, especially in personal computers, is remarkable, and a so-called multitask process has been becoming popular. For this reason, not too much load is imposed on the computer side even if the digital camera is connected to the computer, and the computer sources are used by the digital camera to execute the operation for the digital camera itself.